House pares NASA’s 2013 budget back

Budget maneuvers may compel a mission to Europa.

The Appropriations Committee of the US House of Representatives has set May 8 as the date they will begin debating an election year budget that pares NASA back to its lowest level as a percentage of the Federal budget since 1959, surpassing last year's record low of 0.48%. In absolute terms, it will roughly match the 2006 Bush levels, cutting money from the Space Technology and Commercial Crew program requests for a third year and adding money to the Space Launch System and the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, two House favorites.

The Congressional Space Program

The House budget contrasts with the Senate budget, which also cuts money from the $830M Commercial Crew budget request but decreases NASA's budget somewhat less in absolute terms. The House also conflicts with the Senate in oversight of the Commercial Crew program, in that the House attempts to direct NASA to narrow the current field of four manned spacecraft to a single "competitor." The Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle is already contracted to Lockheed-Martin, and many on the Hill would like to see NASA hand the Commercial Crew vehicle for ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station to Boeing.

The report accompanying the new budget bill from the House's Commerce, Justice and Science committee calls NASA's estimated development costs on the four vehicles competing to ferry crew to the Space Station ($4.86B) "too high". After the Space Station's life was shortened by the Bush administration, which would have had it re-enter the atmosphere in 2015, one of the first acts of the Obama administration was to extend the Station to at least 2020. The report points out that the vehicles might only service the Space Station a few years before the Station is forced to re-enter the atmosphere.

The report also raises the concern that the Federal Government is not protecting its own intellectual and physical property, should one or more competitors leave the competition and strike out on its own. It is difficult to discern which one of the companies might be the target of this concern, given that all four, Boeing, SpaceX, Sierra Nevada, and Blue Origin, have designed and developed their own vehicles.

Pick a winner now to avoid picking the wrong winner later

After raising the intellectual property issue, the report compares the Commercial Crew program to the failure last year of solar energy firm Solyndra, which failed in part due to the drastic recent decrease in the cost of natural gas. Solyndra's capital loans were guaranteed by the Federal Government, but no such loans or guarantees have been made in the case of the four Commercial Crew competitors, which are mostly self-funding—NASA contributes as a partner. Funding to the four vehicles in the Commercial Crew program for the last three years to date has been $830M. In contrast, the Orion Multipurpose Crew Vehicle is funded this year at $1.5B.

The solution, according to the report, is to abandon the competition and pick a winner. “The Committee believes that many of these concerns would be addressed by an immediate downselect to a single competitor or, at most, the execution of a leader-follower paradigm in which NASA makes one large award to a main commercial partner and a second small award to a back-up partner."

Boeing has been mentioned in hearings as the preferred company by many in the House despite that it is at least one year behind SpaceX in vehicle development. The weakest competitor is Sierra Nevada, with a vehicle that is a reincarnation of the NASA HL-20 vehicle designed for servicing the Station, so it seems likely that NASA would choose Sierra Nevada for the small award in a leader-follower paradigm. But that vehicle is also being produced by Boeing as Sierra Nevada's largest subcontractor, leading to an interesting position wherein Boeing would be both the leader and the follower.

Desperate times lead to Space Act Agreements

Last year, because of Congressional underfunding, NASA was forced to use Space Act Agreements instead of the traditional, and more stringent, Federal Acquisition Regulation system to fund its Commercial Crew efforts. According to a statement Administrator Charlie Boldeny, NASA would have only been able to fund one company with the $406M it received last year in lieu of its $829M request. By using Space Act Agreements, which are also far less costly, it was able to stretch that budget to four companies.

The admission was curious in that it gave proof that Space Act Agreements allow NASA to get far more for its taxpayer dollars. Despite the resourcefulness, however, domestic U.S. access to the Station was delayed by another year to 2017.

In this year's budget request, NASA stated that it would again be using Space Act Agreements to manage the 2013 Commercial Crew Program. The House budget report strongly encourages NASA to move away from SAA's, but stops short of attempting to make it law.

Heavy lifting

The biggest curiosity in the space business is currently the Space Launch System, labeled by many as the "Senate Launch System" because NASA seems to have been forced to take a rocket they didn't specify and don't want. Both the House and the Senate require the Space Launch System by law to have the capability to lift 130 metric tons to orbit, even though no mission exists yet for the giant rocket and no one is sure that one will exist for the forseeable future.

The SLS is so expensive that NASA will only be able to afford to launch it every two years at best, giving rise to a strong suspicion that the rocket will be cancelled before completion. In attempt to spare all parties from further embarassment, the new House bill orders NASA to come up with a list of possible missions and destinations for SLS.

All the currently proposed missions could be accomplished with existing (and much cheaper) rockets, provided that NASA is able to start its planned use of orbital fuel depots for refueling. The SLS retains strong support in Congress, where it originated, and so the House bill this year requires quarterly reports on the state of the Space Launch System to make sure that it is making proper progress.

The last curiosity in the House budget is that it could potentially force NASA to explore Europa, Jupiter's watery moon and potentially the best place other than Earth to find new life. After withdrawing its support for the joint U.S.-European ExoMars program earlier this year amidst a hail of criticism, NASA proposed a new integrated (and putatively lower-cost) strategy entitled "Mars Next Decade."

The House bill increases the funding for Mars Next Decade by $88M, and mandates that the National Research Council must certify that Mars Next Decade will return a sample of Martian soil to the Earth. If the NRC is unable to make this guarantee, NASA must "(1) notify the Committees; (2) reallocate the funds provided for Mars Next Decade to the Outer Planets Flagship program in order to begin substantive work on the second priority mission, a descoped Europa orbiter (considered in the 2011 Planetary Decadal Survey; and (3) submit the Mars Next Decade mission concept, or any substitute Mars mission concept, for competition in the Discovery or New Frontiers programs."

Congress will begin debating the new bill shortly before SpaceX hopes to launch its first attempt to berth a Dragon spacecraft with the International Space Station. That launch has now slipped to May 10. Still, next week will be an exciting one for space exploration advocates, as will the entire year.

14 Reader Comments

When the only customer is the US government these private competitions will only result in a single company that will fleece the US for years to come, after an eventual winner is picked. For a prime example Google the F-35.

The space program should be handled by NASA. Let private industry build spaceships when they have a market based reason for being in space.

This is just fucking embarrassing. Defense spending for 2010 was over $600 billion, and they gave NASA $18.3. It's a travesty, and makes me want to scissor-kick every politician right in their stupid face. No one cares about space exploration anymore:

"Hey, want to go explore 99.9999999999999999 percent of the known universe? Bet there's some really cool stuff out there!"

"Nah, I'm going to play with myself here in the corner. Who wants to go into boring old space? Math is hard."

It's the space shuttle all over again: designed by a committee of Congresscritters who have no idea what NASA actually needs, they just want the money funneled to their constituency & corporate friends.

When the only customer is the US government these private competitions will only result in a single company that will fleece the US for years to come, after an eventual winner is picked. For a prime example Google the F-35.

The space program should be handled by NASA. Let private industry build spaceships when they have a market based reason for being in space.

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For all the excitement about the privatization of space, I anticipate that it will be end up similar to the privatization of civilian nuclear power-- that is, a veneer of Ayn Rand on layers of direct subsidies, indirect subsidies and tax breaks.

When the only customer is the US government these private competitions will only result in a single company that will fleece the US for years to come, after an eventual winner is picked. For a prime example Google the F-35.

The space program should be handled by NASA. Let private industry build spaceships when they have a market based reason for being in space.

??? There's lots of market demand for access to space, mainly for satellites. SpaceX is already booked for years.

In this year's budget request, NASA stated that it would again be using Space Act Agreements to manage the 2013 Commercial Crew Program. The House budget report strongly encourages NASA to move away from SAA's, but stops short of attempting to make it law.

Does anyone here know what the downside is to these SAA? Why does the House not like them?

ok this is one of the things that really really pisses me off WHY? The technology we enjoy and use in our every day lives can be attributed to the space programs advances during the 1958 - 1969 space race between Russia and the United States. We are abandoning human space exploration, science and technological advancements by cutting our own space program to the bone and it needs to stop now before it is too late.

I'd rather put off space exploration so that my grand children won't be paying off the debt. Of course, it's all a drop in the bucket compared to the military budgets. And that's just what's on the books.

Leave space exploration to the market... and no... I'm not talking about the subsidized jokes the republicans like to put the aptly named "Ayn Rand veneer" on. Next we'll be saying American corn farmers compete on the free market....

Micromanagement by Congress is one of the key reasons that NASA and the rest of the agencies are hamstrung. Congress is so dysfunctional that it cannot even do its own job - witness its inability to pass a budget on time. Yet, Congress insists on not only appropriating funds, but specifying in excruciating detail how those funds must be spent. And, just in case an agency might be doing something intelligent, Congress also demands regular reports to slow things down. The Judicial branch ought to rule this kind of activity unconstitutional.

As far as NASA goes, there are many bright and capable people who have great ideas that would inspire the world. However, when a NASA committee gets together and you add a pinch of Congressional guidance, dumb things happen. The Ares I crew launch vehicle was a very poor design for its intended purpose. It's thrust-to-weight at liftoff was too high (high ascent heating, high dynamic pressure, and difficult to implement crew escape), and the vibration environment (absent the damping from a couple of million pounds of External Tank and Shuttle Orbiter) was terrible for a crew. There are many other examples of stupidity...for instance, Congress added a line item in an early 1990's NASA budget that prohibted NASA from spending any money on inflatable space habitats. Inflatables were studied in the early 1960's (Goodyear design in Popular Science, December 1962. But Congress perceived inflatable habitat research as threatening the ISS habitat module, which was eventually cancelled anyway to reduce ISS total cost. Twenty years later, NASA is looking hard at inflatable space habitats once again. But that technology could have been tested and ready many years ago. Congress should trust the agencies that hold the technical expertise and stop trying to apply its ineptness to every governmental activity.

Every day I hate the Senate Pork Launcher System a little more. It's only a little because my hate skyrocketed to dizzying heights the moment I heard they were going to force it on NASA and it's tough to find more hate to pile on.

This one bumped it up a good chunk more. "No way are we giving you any money, but what you *do* get make sure to spend on this useless project instead of intelligent new strategies that would let you do more, cheaper, than the Pork Launcer could ever dream!"

Just as NASA looks poised to enter their most exciting phase since the 60s, Congress is ready, willing, and able to cock it all up.